Skip to main content

Traffic alert app from Pennsylvania company launches in UK

Motorists using major highways in England can now access real-time, personalised traffic and roadway travel information on their smartphones by downloading a free app developed by Philadelphia-based Information Logistics. The Hands-Free Traffic Talker England (HFT England) app audibly broadcasts information about a motorist's specific travel route, freeing the user from the distractions of touching the phone, reading messages, or listening to irrelevant traffic alerts.
August 6, 2012 Read time: 2 mins

Motorists using major highways in England can now access real-time, personalised traffic and roadway travel information on their smartphones by downloading a free app developed by Philadelphia-based Information Logistics. The Hands-Free Traffic Talker England (HFT England) app audibly broadcasts information about a motorist's specific travel route, freeing the user from the distractions of touching the phone, reading messages, or listening to irrelevant traffic alerts.

England's 503 Highways Agency is providing traffic information and timely advisories about all of its roadways to Information Logistics. Advisories concern lane closures, active road works, accidents, traffic congestion, and other conditions affecting travel. The Highways Agency, an Executive Agency of the United Kingdom's 1837 Department for Transport, is responsible for operating, maintaining, and improving the strategic road network of England, outside London.

"We want to allow road users to access live and targeted traffic information in a safe manner when they need it. The availability of smartphones provides a way to do just that, and the introduction of this hands-free app is really exciting, it being both iPhone and 1812 Android compatible," said Highways Agency director for traffic management Simon Sheldon-Wilson.

"Our collaboration with Information Logistics is a good example of the public and private sectors working together to provide motorists with real-time traffic news and constant updates about incidents on the network," Sheldon-Wilson added.

Information Logistics President Mary Farrell said this is the company's first overseas launch of the traffic app. "We're just very delighted that the Highways Agency saw the value that our app can deliver to motorists," Farrell said. "We like to tell people that our app moves with them, and now we can say it's moved to England. This launch represents an important breakthrough for our team here." The app is currently used in the US by the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission to provide location specific traffic advisories to motorists using its toll-road system.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Smart sensors can detect iPhone and Android devices
    May 25, 2012
    Spanish company Libelium has announced it has developed new sensing technology that can detect smartphones through their WiFi or Bluetooth interfaces and integrated it inside Meshlium Xtreme, the company's multiprotocol router. Applications of this new technology go from street activity measurement to vehicle traffic management. For instance, the company claims it is possible to monitor the number of people passing daily in a street, the average time they stop at landmarks, like shopping windows, and even d
  • Efkon Group wins major contract in South Africa
    February 6, 2012
    Efkon Group’s subsidiary in South Africa, Tollink, has been awarded a major contract to install and operate an intelligent transportation system on freeways in South Africa.
  • Swarco: ‘Everyone’s running after buzzwords’
    April 1, 2019
    The ITS world finds itself in a time of great change. Swarco’s Michael Schuch talks to Adam Hill about connectivity, the increasing importance of the end user – and why you shouldn’t leave your core business behind
  • Centralised traffic control, managing changing traffic demands
    January 23, 2012
    Paul van Koningsbruggen and Dave Marples of Technolution BV describe, using a national example from the Netherlands, how smart add-ons to traffic control centres combine to increase cross-centre capabilities and cost-efficiency. Increasingly, traffic management is becoming the natural partner of the civil engineer, improving flows over existing infrastructure to deliver an alternative to laying more blacktop. As in any emerging market, the first steps towards mature traffic management have not necessarily r